New Beginnings and Old Fears
by Bookish Brownie
Summary: Remus considers an important upcoming event in his life at the beginning of DH; prequel to "Coming Home." Rated for some adult themes, but nothing too bad.


A/N: This takes place the night before Harry's seventeenth birthday party.

**New Beginnings and Old Fears**

He had never felt so awake.

He couldn't sleep even if he wanted to. So he watched the gentle rise and fall of her chest. He admired the creamy skin of her still smooth and toned stomach that her pajama top had ridden up slightly to reveal.

He didn't believe it immediately when she told him. They had been so careful, or so he had thought. But he had smiled and kissed her, and let himself get carried away in the joy of a new life.

They had not really had time to discuss it. He knew that the doubts were in the back of both their minds, although his were a little more to the forefront. But, despite everything, the war, the laws, the newness of their marriage, they were happy. Happy to share this thing that was bigger than all their petty concerns.

He sighed quietly. She looked so delicate in her sleep. There was her heart-shaped face with its high cheekbones, which always seemed hardened by the glitter of determination in her eyes when she was awake. There were her hands, so small and dainty, whose calluses were not so prominent in the darkness. He didn't know how the eventual expansion of her stomach would fit in.

Struck by a new thought, he almost laughed. However, his mirth was immediately chased away by a vague feeling of uneasiness settling over him like a cloak. They had spent so long hiding their relationship the previous year. There would be furtive kisses before and after Order meetings. Sometimes, if Sirius' mood would allow, they would go to her flat. They hid behind the façade of comrades and friends as they guarded their little world away from fear and strife jealously.

They were still hiding. Hiding their marriage that would surely lose Tonks the job that she had trained so long and sacrificed so much for. But soon there would be irrefutable proof of their relationship for all the world to see. The rational part of him said that she would lose her job anyway, that the Death Eaters infiltrating the Ministry would not allow a "shapeshifting freak" to work there. He also knew that, even if they did, it would be too dangerous.

But the rational part of him was not in control. It was the part of his mind long schooled in self-loathing and insecurity that ruled him in times such as these.

He knew what people would say. It was one thing to "dally" with a werewolf; it was another thing entirely to carry his… "spawn." Now she would always bear his taint. She was well and truly trapped in this web of their own design. If she ever changed her mind about marrying an unemployed, tired, shabby werewolf, she would have no other options.

He tried to stop this train of thought. He knew that Tonks could say and do any number of things to reassure him of her love and the rightness of their being together, but his dark imaginings had too much momentum.

A notion that was more powerful and horrifying than any other was spreading its tendrils throughout his mind and his heart. So much so, that he breathed with it. With each gasp of incoming air he felt a little more constricted. Soon his heart would not be able to beat at all.

But he pushed the panic away. Her breath was still going in and out, deep and even. In and out. In and out.

Not like his. For, while he was somewhat calmer, the vines that held him would not let go.

Every book on werewolves that he had ever read, every werewolf with whom he had ever talked, said that lycanthropy could not be inherited. However, there were few documented cases of non-feral werewolves having children, or cases when the mother bearing the baby was not herself a lycanthrope.

The thought gripped him and tore at him that there could be exceptions, that he could have passed on his curse to an innocent child. Worse, no one knew the precise nature of how werewolf offspring developed.

If they were wrong, if the moon did exert its influence over his unborn baby, then he would have destroyed them both. The two entities, the two people, that he loved most in the world would be gone, before he was even able to meet one of them properly. And it would be all his fault. They would go the way of everyone else that he had ever loved.

Destroyed by his own selfish love, his selfish need.

Variations on these thoughts played through his mind like some grotesque Muggle horror movie. The images of gruesome death and screams of agony made him feel sick. There was a ringing in his ears, and bile rose in his throat.

All the while his Nymphadora breathed in and out, deep and even. He brought himself under control. She was alive and well and happy. He would share his doubts and fear with her, like he had promised after that night in the Hospital Wing, like he had reassured her with his marriage vows.

He had to believe that they would survive, that his terror was unfounded. "They'll be all right. We'll be a proper family." He repeated those words to himself over and over. He was almost starting to believe them as he fell into an unsettled sleep.

Only, he didn't have a chance to discuss any of these things with her before the larger world intruded into their sacred placeonce again.


End file.
